Òrékelęwà (3)

“When it comes to matters of the heart my greatest fear is not falling in love…they say it’s a beautiful thing…my fear is falling out of love”.

The last thing I wanted at this hour of the night was to have someone disturb me with a call,yet my phone had rung twice already. Work had been hectic and what little strength I had left was expended in traffic. I got home too tired to even shower, I just fell on the bed and drifted off to sleep only to get awaken barely 20 minutes later by the buzzing of my phone.

The phone rang for the third time. “Who the f#%k is this? Don’t they get the concept of day and night?”, I thought as I frantically tried to pick the phone without opening my eyes. I rarely use swear words but I’m sure you understand my grief. I answered the call with a half mouthed “Yes?” and the person replied “Hey you…” but paused for a split second after noting the annoyance in my voice, “I’m sorry, did I wake you up?”. It was ‘Lewa, I know that voice even if I hear it after twenty-four hours of sleep.

I sat up and cleared my throat. “No, not at all. I was just getting into bed”, I said and I smiled sheepishly. She has that effect on me.

I had intentionally not called her in two days. We spoke everyday in the past two weeks but the call was always from my end. You see the trick to knowing if the ‘feeling’ is mutual is to stop calling for a while and see if the other party does.

“Oh okay, was wondering why you haven’t called in 48 hours, is everything fine?”, she asked. I literally pumped my fist as I thought to myself, “Yessss, she fell for it”. “I’m sorry Lewa,work has been hectic plus you told me you had a test coming up the last time we spoke, and I didn’t want to disturb you”, I replied apologetically.

“How many times do I have to tell you you’re not disturbing me, I thought you had forgotten about me though”, she said,her tone sounding really serious. Like it had become when conversing with her, I thought for a minute,”forget you?,forget it!”.

Truth be told I would have called her first thing the next morning if she had not called.

“I’m terribly sorry dear,I promise to make it up to you, how about we hook up this Friday?”, I replied,praying she doesn’t turn me down. We had seen twice after our first time of meeting, the most recent being a fortnight ago. Each time we were together, we lost track of time because there was a million and one things to talk about.

I heaved a sigh of relief when she said “You definitely have to make it up to me. I think Friday isn’t a bad time”. She asked me to go back to sleep. Guess she was not fooled by my “barely getting to bed” story. We did the whole ‘sweet dreams’ talk and the line went dead. It took me another hour to get to sleep. I rolled from one side of the bed to another…Friday can’t come quickly enough.

Everyone that’s a party rocker knows ‘The Castle’ is one of the best places on this side of town to hang out on a Friday night. If you know this cool spot well enough, you’d know Friday means ‘Karaoke night’. I remember I once brought an intern from the office to this place and tipped the hype man to call me out to sing. I acted surprised when my name was called and after much persuasion by her I stood up reluctantly and chose Mario’s ‘How do I breathe’. I don’t mean to brag but I have a good voice (no, I wasn’t in the choir at any point,lol). I sent the crowd into a frenzy with my voice and the height of my performance was when I brought out the young, unsuspecting babe to the stage, knelt before her and sang the concluding verse. As we stepped off the stage, I whispered into her ears amidst cheers “You’d sing for me tonight”, and she just giggled. She sang a couple of ‘verses’ in the back seat of my car later that night.

Tonight though, I had only one thing in mind, I just want to see ‘Lewa smile and have her weaken me at the knees like she always does. We agreed to meet at 7pm. I had offered to pick her up but she gave some excuse and said she’d figure her way. I walked into ‘The Castle’ and navigated my way to a carefully picked out spot in a corner, I don’t want anybody calling me out tonight.

‘Lewa came in half an hour late. I don’t know if she does it on purpose but she’s always exactly 30 minutes late. I signaled to her and she walked towards where I was, causing a couple of heads to turn in her direction. You know how we try to assess if the guy is deserving of the beautiful lady *winks.

We hugged briefly and she apologized for coming late. While she tendered her apologies, she was all smiles, revealing her white set of teeth. The smile did that ‘thing’ to me again.

“You’re beautiful as ever, there’s nothing to be sorry about”, I smiled in return and told her. The barman came to take our orders and we got down to the night, chatting away.

We had gone on and on with people singing songs, some with great voices, some others, well….

We had gotten so engrossed in ourselves that we did not know people were staring in our direction, they started clapping and it was at that point I realized what they were looking at. The hype man had pointed at us and called ‘Lewa out to sing!!! I was embarrassed but she just smiled, stood up and walked towards the stage. She muttered something to the DJ and John Legend’s ‘All of me’ came on the screen. When she opened her mouth to sing, I heard the most beautiful voice ever, I mean Beyoncé has got nothing on her!

The height of the performance was in the final verse, she called me out, talk about Dejavu! I heard the lyrics of the song and my heart did an Usain Bolt“…’cos all of me, loves all of you,
Love your curves and all your edges,

even when I lose,

I’m winning…”

I stood there blushing like a teenage boy. When she concluded the performance, she gently planted a kiss on my forehead and whispered into my ears…”Babe, let’s get out of here”.

There and then, I knew what I wanted from her, and I was set on getting it by all means possible.